An overview of PAM in China

2018.12.05

Applications of PAM

Polyacrylamides
or PAMs, are oftern copolymers of acrylamide and one or more other monomers. PAM
is a non-ionic, watersoluble, and biocompatible polymer that can be tailored to
meet a broad range of applications, such as oil extraction, paper making, water
treatment, textile, agrochemicals, etc.In 2017, the
largest consumption of polyacrylamide in China is oil extraction, followed by
water treatment and papermaking, which accounted for 44.9%, 29.8% and 12.9%
respectively.

Fig.1 Consumption Structure of PAM in China

However, the
global PAM consumption structure is quite different, the largest application is
water treatment accounting for 53%, followed by papermaking accounting for 27%.
The cause for the differentiation may be that the oil extraction in other
countries has not entered to the tertiary phase, and the PAM is not suitable as
the oil displacing agent; on the other hand, PAM has been used as flocculating
agent for a long time in foreign countries while China started quite late. Chinese PAM Import & Export

According to the
China Customs, the import of PAM in 2017 is about 20,000 MT and the export is
about 56,600MT.

Fig. 2 China PAM Import & Export(2009-2017)

Fig.3PAM Import
& Export Price (2009-2017)

PAM Market in China

At present, the
production and consumption of polyacrylamide in China are increasing year by
year, and a large number of high-end products still need to be imported, which
are basically high-end cationic polyacrylamide products while the export are
mainly anionic polyacrylamide products.

In the recent
years, the market scale of PAM in China remains above 10 billion Yuan. In 2017,
the PAM market size reached 10.776 billion Yuan, increasing by 5.88% from 10.177
billion in 2016.